3 September 2025
“How nice the quarrel was…”
“What?”
“Shakespeare.”
“If you bring up that dead old white man one mo time. Don’t nobody wanna talk about his ass. You act like he got all the answers. You look crazy out here quoting Shakespeare and shit.”
So far this year I have seen Rupert Goold’s epic take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet set aboard a tilting ocean-going liner, the Elsinor, staged at the RSC, Mark Lockyer’s stunning one-man Hamlet: The Play’s The Thing at Wilton’s Music Hall and a thrilling 60-minute aerial Hamlet by New York Circus Project at the Edinburgh Fringe. Do I/we really need to see a new queer take on Hamlet set in the American Deep South? Well after experiencing the life-enhancing shot of pure joy that Fat Ham injects into its audience, I have to report that the answer is very definitely YES!
Philadephia-based playwright and educator (he’s an associate professor of theatre at Villanova University) James Ijames has concocted an electrifying take on Shakespeare’s classic story of revenge and murder, but with a black queer man at its centre. But this isn’t a straightforward retelling of Bard’s tale of madness, vengeance and murder, he translates the domestic and political conflict of Hamlet to the modern South where he grew up. We lose quite a few grand speeches – although “What a piece of work is a man“, spoken in Hamlet by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, Scene 2, is cleverly worked here into a plot development about Larry (Corey Montague-Sholay), a soldier with PTSD and a troubling secret.
Lead produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Fat Ham arrives in the UK trailing a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and five Tony award nominations, including Best Play, from an acclaimed 2023 Broadway run that boasted Wicked star Cynthia Erivo as one of its producers. It is a masterful production that balances humour and joy throughout, its characters are not as villainous as Shakespeare’s, there are fewer deaths and there is even a happy-ever-after ending
At the epicentre of events is a pensive prince, Juicy (a winning Olisa Odele – glorious), who is commanded by the ghost of his father (a homophobic bully who killed a man because his breath stank and was gruesomely murdered in kind in prison) to avenge his death.
“You gotta avenge me!”
“I ain’t no avenger”
“We supposed to be one beating heart. You and me. You my son! My namesake!”
“It’s amazing what fathers think they own of their sons just cause we share a name”
The vibrant setting (set design by Maruti Evans, costume design by Dominique Fawn Hill) is the tacky backyard celebration for the indecently fast second wedding of his mother Tedra (Andi Osho) and Rev (Sule Rimi), Juicy’s uncle, who ordered the death of Juicy’s father, who in turn uses physical violence to taunt Juicy and his “softness”. The other guests are Juicy’s cannabis-loving cousin Tio (Kieran Taylor-Ford – hilarious), an uptight church going, god-fearing family friend Rabby (Sandra Marvin – having a whale of a time) “semi-churchy but honestly she just wanna drink and praise the Lord” and her grown up children, Opal (Jasmine Elcock) and Larry, bringing chaos and much hilarity as the jokes fly and shots of rum are knocked back. As the alcohol flows and a game of charades (replacing the players’ play in Hamlet) exposes the truth about Pap’s death, barriers and walls are brought down and personal secrets are revealed and confronted.
All the British cast bring their A game. And another big plus is its running time – a swift 90 minutes as opposed to Hamlet’s 4+ hours. No spoilers from me but the ending is a joy-filled explosion of glitter, sequins, and karoke.
It was sad to see only a smattering of people of colour in the audience at the Saturday matinee – it’s almost always a white middle class, middle aged to elderly white audience at the RSC.
Forget Hamlet’s instruction to Ophelia to “Get thee to a nunnery” and get this triumph to the West End!
